


with love from phobetor

by shrill_fangirl_screaming



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: /end psa, Gen, i have no issue with them being lovers this just isn't a fic about that, pls note this fic is dedicated to loki and tony as FRIENDS not lovers, really just me woobifying the fuck out of loki, torture mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 13:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15819465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrill_fangirl_screaming/pseuds/shrill_fangirl_screaming
Summary: Tony stumbles across Loki in the kitchen of Avengers Tower at four in the morning, and the two get to talking.





	with love from phobetor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mitzvahmelting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzvahmelting/gifts).



> I sort of got mitzvahmelting into the Loki fandom by osmosis because we are both trash, but while I stan Loki in the "my garbage drama queen genocidal son is The Worst and I Love him" way, Mitz stans Loki in the "he is seventeen and deeply abused and needs Comfort" kind of way, For her birthday (belated, because I’m a *great* friend), I wrote her this fic, which just woobifies the fuck out of Loki and plays up the abuse he clearly experienced offscreen prior to the first Avengers movie. If you don’t like woobifying Loki, I humbly suggest you look elsewhere for content. 
> 
> Anyway, hbd mitz!!!!!!!!

Tony had stopped being surprised when he bumped into someone in the newly-rechristened Avengers Tower in the dead of night when most of the world was asleep. They each had their own demons that kept them up at all hours, and so usually, whenever one of them had bad enough nightmares that it drove them from the comfort of their beds, they’d bump into someone else roaming the halls, plagued by the same problem.

This, however, was new.

This, meaning Loki, sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, free hand adjusting the collar around his neck. Clint had been the one to insist on the collar- if they were going to be keeping Loki around, he’d argued, they needed some kind of assurance, some kind of reminder to the world that this man had helped launch an invasion that had cost them all, and him especially, so much.

The magician looked childlike, curled against one of the cabinets with his hair hanging lank around his shoulders. When it was slicked back and oiled like it usually was, it added a sharpness to his features that made him look older. Now, with his hair waving and frizzing around his face, he looked much younger, almost like a teenager.

“What are you doing up?” Tony asked the magician. He wanted to believe Thor, that Loki had been made harmless to fulfill the lifelong servitude to which he’d been punished, but Thor was also a dumbass. Who knew what Loki was capable of, even now, even collared?

Loki startled away from Tony’s words, hands flying up to his face and armor crackling around him in an instant. Watching him do magic always gave Tony a headache, the way he made the world move in a way it wasn’t supposed to, so it took Tony a second to place that Loki must be afraid. It was a clear defensive move- Tony knew, Tony’d spent enough time post-Afghanistan clinging to his armor to recognize that behavior in someone else. Tony recognized it, and it gave him feelings, so he did a dumb thing.

“Hey, hey,” he said, crouching close to the floor. “Just making friendly conversation. I’m not mad.”

The collar around Loki’s neck disconnected him from any possible attack magic, which was the only reason Tony considered this _dumb_ instead of _suicidal_. The All-Mother, Frigga, had begged them not to sever Loki’s connection to magic entirely, but they couldn’t leave him armed to the teeth, so a compromise had been struck. They’d stripped him of his access to weaponry, including the multitude of little silver knives he seemed so accustomed to throwing. A woman’s weapon, Thor had told them. Only women and craven fought from a distance on Asgard. Proper men fought at close range. Of course, considering the source- Thor took a hammer, a tool used to build, and turned that into a weapon.

Tony’s hyperactive brain went down this tangent because Loki’s hands had clenched into fists, but not in a way that Tony recognized from seeing Nat and Cap and Clint spar in the gym, fists ready to throw or block punches. Loki’s hands clenched like they were hoping his knives would appear in spite of all precautions, clutching at straws. Tony recognized that move too- his dive out of the Tower, arms outstretched, praying to deities he didn’t believe in for his half-finished armor to defy all odds and come to him.

“No one’s going to hurt you,” Tony promised. “You’re okay, you’re safe. This is Avengers Tower.”

Loki locked eyes with him, and then reality warped again and suddenly Loki was disaffected and cool, in crisp loungewear with his hair slicked back, relaxing against the cabinet like he hadn’t a care in the world. “I didn’t see you there,” he said.

“Bullshit,” Tony replied. “You’re clearly going through something. Is it nightmares, why you’re up at-“ he craned his neck- “four-thirteen AM?”

“I’m no child, to cringe at shadows,” Loki replied haughtily, sticking his nose in the air. “Night terrors are womanly weakness, they-“

“Every single person in this tower has nightmares, and if they say they don’t, they’re lying to you,” Tony replied. “We’ve seen some shit and our brains love to torture us. Doesn’t make us childish or weak, and also, I wouldn’t recommend linking ‘womanly’ with ‘weakness’ in front of Natasha. Or Cap. Or, honestly, any of us, it’s-“

“Us,” Loki replied. “All. Are you including my _dear_ brother in your reckonings?”

Tony frowned. “Yes?”

“You do not know him as I do,” Loki replied. “I have been by his side for millennia, and I can assure you-“

“Millennia,” Tony said. Something about that tripped his finely-honed bullshit radar. Anyone who spouted bullshit as often as Tony Stark did knew how to recognize it in others. He knew Thor and Loki were old enough to have been considered deities by the Vikings, but from his vague memories of the few history classes he’d been coerced into attendings, the heyday of the Vikings wasn’t _ancient_ ancient. And furthermore, visiting an alien planet to set yourself up in myth and legend as a deity struck Tony as the kind of thing kids would do as a prank, not something adults would do for some kind of actual purpose. “Remind me, what’s the conversion of Earth years to Asgard ones, like, in context of growth and development?”

Loki’s nose managed to go even higher in the air. “Explaining it to you would be like explaining calculus to a child, unfamiliar as you are with Asgardian timekeeping.”

Tony’s bullshit radar pinged again. Thor might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was genuine, and he never treated any of them like they were unsophisticated or helplessly alien. Asgard seemed to be a lot like Earth, just shiny and in outer space and with magic. “See, I think that’s a front because you don’t want to admit you’re basically still a kid,” Tony said. “No adult brings up how they’re not a child this often in conversation unless they’re self-conscious about how young they are.”

“I have lived for thousands of your Earth years,” Loki insisted.

“Of course, I could always ask Thor tomorrow,” Tony replied. He was still crouching awkwardly on the floor, so he twisted to settle himself more comfortably, slouching against the same cabinet Loki’s back rested against. “Now that I think about it, he gives off a cheerful college-senior kind of vibe, and to hear Jane and Erik tell it, he had a whole coming-of-age thing in New Mexico not that long ago. I bet he’s only twenty-one, twenty-two, once you do the conversion. Assuming an Earth average age gap between children applies-“

“I’m the equivalent of seventeen and three-quarters, are you happy now?” Loki snapped.

No.

No, Tony really wasn’t, because that was so much younger than he could have ever feared. This was a child, really, a literal child. No wonder all he seemed to crave was attention. Tony had met his fair share of attention-starved teenage children of obscenely rich people when he was busy being an attention-starved teenage child of an obscenely rich person. Sure, Tony never tried to conquer another planet to get someone to notice him, but he also wasn’t a shiny space Viking. He fooled around with AI tech; Loki did the same with aliens. It could just be chalked up to luck, then, that Tony’s experiments had yielded the harmless Dummy, You, and Butterfingers, while Loki’s had brought a destructive alien army and a generous helping of trauma.

“You’ve got a glamour up, haven’t you?” Tony asked. “To make you look older.”

Loki glared some more, and then reality warped and a slightly different Loki sat in front of him. Hair frizzy and wavy to his shoulders, bigger eyes, less stubble. Not just younger, but more effeminate. Then he shifted again and he was blue, covered in white markings like henna tattoos, eyes red and slit-pupiled. “Is this what you want to see, mortal?” Loki asked, hissing his s’s in a way that was even more alien somehow than the Asgardians’ natural bugfuck-crazy accent. “Who I _truly_ am beneath the masks and deceit, the reason my so-called mother begged you to let me keep enough magic to hide the shame that she’d raised a monster, not a true Odinson at all-“

_Loki probably doesn’t even realize he’s crying_ , Tony thought to himself. The curl of Loki’s shoulder, the snarl on his lips, the way his knees stayed curled close to his chest, all of it was as defensive as a cornered housecat snaring desperately at the apex predator that held its life in its hands. A wise man would have backed away, but no one had ever accused Tony of wisdom.

He hugged Loki as hard as he possibly could. The little god’s skin burned icy cold to the touch, and for a second the kid remained stiff as ice in Tony’s arms, but then a dam broke and he started to cling, cling like he was on the edge of an abyss and Tony was the only thing holding him back.

“Okay,” Tony said. “I am absolutely the last person you should talk to when it comes to recognizing and dealing responsibly with mental health issues, but it occurs to me that you might need some kind of help. Like, beyond what any of us can do for you help. Like, a goddamn team of professionals kind of help.”

As suddenly as he had collapsed, Loki pulled away, and Tony saw the glamour flicker back up and around Loki, making him look older, manlier, and more disaffected. “Send me along, then,” Loki said. “Quit this womanly dillydalling and-“

“Okay, again, quit it with the equating women and weakness, I’m not mad because you’re clearly just echoing the bullshit you grew up hearing, but more importantly, we’re not going to send you _away_ ,” Tony explained. “Just, like. Get you a therapist.”

Loki looked at him with open hostility. “I don’t know what that means.”

“A therapist,” Tony repeated. “Someone to talk to. About your feelings and whatnot. I’ve been told to go to one enough times… do you guys not have therapists on Asgard?”

“We don’t… talk, about our feelings,” Loki replied, hesitating between every word.

Tony nodded. “Yes. Hm. I have done that for many years, and I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“If you don’t go to one of these _therapists_ , then I don’t need to,” Loki said.

God damn it, was this parenting? Was this what parenting fel litke? “God, fine, if I go to a therapist, will you go to one too?” The kid’s face remained screwed up in deep suspicion. “Look, they can help with the nightmares. They have tools, medicine, stuff to help you sleep through the night.”

“I don’t have nightmares,” Loki said, but it’s an automatic reply. Tony knew that trick too, knew what it sounded like when a response was canned while a person’s mind was working away at something else. The little god was considering Tony, _really_ considering him.

“Well, I do,” Tony said. “In Afghanistan, when I got this-“ he tapped his fingers across the arc reactor, a comforting nervous tic- “they held me underwater, and I dream about it. Cap and I are talking about getting buttons for a club. The I Have Nightmares About Drowning club. We mask our problems with humor.”

The look Loki gave Tony then… it was shrewd and calculating, probably intended to scare him, but all Tony could feel was a faint sadness. It was one thing to have Tony’s childhood, where no one extended a hand to you, to the point where he clutched at anything much too tightly and held on far too long, but Loki’s must have been something different entirely, for him to see a hand offered and hesitate in fear and open cynicism.

Tony didn’t want to push. So, going against every reflex he had, he turned away from Loki and rested his head against the back of the cabinet.

“They held you underwater for what purpose?” Loki asked.

Okay, so for all Asgard’s faults, it didn’t do waterboarding. Tony wasn’t quite relieved. “Fear,” Tony said. “Pain.”

“Torture,” Loki said, with a tone that quite clearly conveyed, _that explains everything_. “I know it well.”

And God, wasn’t that a kick in the nuts, this _teenage child_ talking about torture with the air of an old Vietnam vet. No, no, an old _World War II_ vet, one of Steve’s geriatric friends who gave off an air of all-knowing about combat and war. No child should have that kind of jaded wisdom about torture.

There was really only one place in his timeline where he could have gotten it, too. Not in Asgard, of that much Tony was sure. Odin gave off a more push-your-child-to-success-and-emotionally-neglect-them vibe, not a physically-torture-your-children kind of vibe, and anyway, Thor wouldn’t have put up with anyone else bullying his little brother. The guy was dense, so it might have taken him a hot second to notice, but Tony had no doubt Thor would have kicked the shit out of anyone on Asgard who hurt Loki. And of course, Loki didn’t get tortured on Earth, so…

In-between. Sometime around getting the Chitauri and coming up with the plan to conquer Earth.

… hadn’t he been limping? The memory came screaming back to him, now with added context. Tony’d chalked it up to the implosion at the super secret SHIELD base that he definitely knew nothing about, but… what if…

“Loki, did someone coerce you into all of it, the New York thing?” Tony asked, turning his head to the side, frowning at the boy.

Loki’s eyes remained on the ceiling, cool disaffected façade firmly in place. “It matters not,” he said haughtily.

“Yes, yes it absolutely does fucking matter, I was tortured for like a half a second and I was ready to make bombs for a terrorist and I’m an adult, you’re like sixteen, you-“

“Seventeen,” Loki corrected, which just confirmed for Tony that the kid wasn’t lying about his age. No one gets bent out of shape about a single year like a child.

He twisted his whole body sideways, studying Loki, really studying him. “Loki, if someone tortured you, please tell me about it. Here, we don’t punish people who were coerced into doing things they didn’t really want to do, we understand.” When that didn’t move Loki, he moved to another argument, something true that felt like a lie, because this was 110% Definitely not the reason why he wanted more context about Loki’s torture. “Also, if there’s some guy out there who wants to conquer Earth, that’s the sort of thing us Avengers should know about.”

Loki looked at him out of the very corners of his eyes, disdainful, calculating. “Corvus,” he finally said. “Corvus Glaive. He… I’m given to understand he does nothing without word from his superior. The Mad Titan, Thanos.”

His voice shook, saying the names. The little god could magic his face all he wanted to look bored with this whole conversation, polish his words to a silver-bright shine, but apparently nothing could keep his voice steady while saying the names of his tormentors. Fear, grief, anger- some kind of emotion made his voice crack like a teenage boy, and God, isn’t that what he was? A child. A literal child.

“We may not have been able to protect you,” Tony said. “But you can be damn sure we’ll Avenge you.”

Somehow, the stupid punchline was what did it. Loki looked at him with the glamour on for a second longer, then collapsed into Tony’s arms. Tony wasn’t even sure if the kid was crying or having a panic attack or hyperventilating or what, but centuries of pent-up emotion were getting vented and somehow, Tony was the closest thing to an adult this kid had. The poor fool.

What had he wanted, when he was a teenager? Or right after he got out of the cave?

The answer was the same either way. Tony held Loki tight and whispered soothing nothings to him, reinforcing the obvious. _I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay_.

**Author's Note:**

> just putting it out there: I am a huge lesbian and so, like all lesbians, I love Thor more than words can possibly express, sorry I called him stupid all those times but lowkey he is, especially in re Loki


End file.
